Richard Foster enjoys a nice cup of tea among the glorious flowers at Harlow Carr in Harrogate.

GARDENS and afternoon tea: two pillars of English civilisation.

Now you can sample them both in style - thanks to Bettys and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS).

Bettys has opened its first new branch for more than 30 years at RHS Garden Harlow Carr, Harrogate, enabling visitors to experience gardening and catering of the highest standards.

The RHS is the United Kingdom's leading garden charity, dedicated to advancing horticulture and promoting good gardening. To celebrate its bicentenary it has created seven historical gardens to show how horticulture has evolved over the last 200 years.

So, with the sun shining and an afternoon tea from Bettys beckoning, Janice and I decided to visit Harlow Carr's ambitious Gardens Through Time exhibition.

The first six gardens, designed by landscape architect Dominic Cole, take visitors on a fascinating time trail, starting with the Regency period, followed by a mid-Victorian garden, its late-Victorian counterpart, an Edwardian garden, a 1950s garden and a 1970s garden.

During the Regency period the landscape gardener Humphrey Repton re-established the flower garden around the house. Grottos and ruins gave gardens a visual impact while ornamental shrubberies appealed to the emerging middle class.

New technology came to the fore in the mid-Victorian period. Manicured lawns, once the preserve of the rich because of the numerous workers required to keep the grass looking good, became the centre-piece of many a garden, thanks to Budding's noisy mechanical mower, while the Wardian case made it possible to import exotic plants into Britain.

Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, home of London's Great Exhibition in 1851, inspired the construction of numerous glasshouses throughout the realm.

Late-Victorian gardens were seen as places for family entertainment and sports like croquet and tennis. The wealthy regarded their gardens as status symbols with men of means competing against each other to create the best fantasy garden. The eccentric millionaire Sir Frank Crisp even built a scale-model of that famous Alpine peak, the Matterhorn, as the centre-piece of his rock garden at Friar Park, Henley.

The Arts And Crafts Movement, advocating the use of local materials, had a huge influence on garden design in the Edwardian period (1901-1910). William Robinson banished bedding systems and planted native species, creating informal, wild and woodland gardens.

The successful partnership of architect Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll consolidated this new approach, capturing the country dream within a formal layout of pools, sunken gardens, pergolas and summer houses.

The 1951 Festival Of Britain embraced Modernism with its concrete planters, abstract layouts and bold plants. Low maintenance was the new mantra, though most British gardens remained traditional, with their lawns, vegetable plots and dainty flowers.

Built-in barbecues began to appear in gardens in the 1970s as dining al fresco became the rage, along with patios and hanging baskets.

The low maintenance mantra gained in strength with the introduction of the plastic Flymo and grow bag.

The seventh garden, entitled Contemporary 2004, has been designed by the popular broadcaster Diarmuid Gavin. His "new tech" approach embraces an imaginative use of materials and ecological planting.

Travelling through time can be exhausting. But Bettys provided the perfect tonic with its famous afternoon tea. Janice and I enjoyed ours on the terrace overlooking some of the garden's 58 acres.

Swiss confectioner Frederick Belmont, who opened the first Bettys Caf Tea Rooms in Harrogate in 1919, would have been impressed with both the food and service.

The Gardens Through Time exhibition covers only a small part of Harlow Carr. There is so much else to see, including a woodland walk, a model village and plants too numerous to count. There is a play area for children and an array of plants for sale in the well-stocked shop.

Competition

Bettys has teamed up with the Evening Press to offer a Bettys voucher worth £25, sufficient for a couple to enjoy afternoon tea or whatever else takes their fancy. Details of how to enter in the Evening Press of Saturday, July 23.

Fact file

RHS Garden Harlow Carr, Crag Lane, Harrogate. Tel: 01423 565418

Opening times: 9.30am to 6pm (or 4pm November to February inclusive).

Admission: Adults £5.50; students £2; children (six to 16) £1.50. Children under six and RHS members free.

Bettys Caf & Shop is open daily from 9am to 5.30pm. Its tea house is open from April to September between 11am and 4pm.

Updated: 16:36 Friday, July 22, 2005